Month: October 2008

This post from Ezra Klein (sourcing the CBO) lays out another interesting relationship between our fiscal and financial woes.

We have a fighting shot at avoiding a large crisis by the various interventions we’re doing now. All these interventions cost money. The money is not money we have, it’s borrowed. It’s borrowed in the form of bonds that are sold to whoever will buy them. Right now, there are still plenty of buyers. But as our fiscal problems continue to get worse, we will have to offer more money (in the form of interest) to keep finding buyers.

The core driver of our fiscal problem is spending more than we got. The area where this is getting the worst and biggest the fastest is health care. In other words, fixing the health care systems is not just a medical and social issue, it is an economic one.

The customer is not always right (truly hilarious stuff. Go to the top quotes and start reading).

Guaranteed workmans comp

World Sunlight Map

A great update on a great experiment about the beginnings of life.

Roger Ebert’s review of “W”

The Morality Test. Well worth taking, find out more about yourself and others.

Metallica vs. AC/DC

Religion

Loser says what?

More on Joe the Plumber. Who isn’t Joe, isn’t a licensed plumber, doesn’t plan to buy the business, doesn’t pay taxes, etc.

Photo guidelines for the economic crisis

Interactive map of the US, where’s the economic troubles?

John Cleese on Sarah Palin

Tips for new paupers: First hand Poverty research

Dissent

Warren Buffet: Buy stocks now

The other day at work I had a four-hour meeting. Two hours in I looked down and realized my leg was pumping. I am a fidgeter. Always have been, always will be. My leg had been pumping the entire time. Did you ever wonder how many calories are burnt by fidgeting?

It turns out a good fidgeter burns an extra 350 calories a day. That’s not bad — 10 days of that is worth a pound of fat. My inner fidgeter is going to get out more.

(The post title refers to my other post, with another dose of dangerously illiterate medical theorizing.)

I had five hours sleep last night. I gave blood in the morning. I went to play poker. I stunk.

Early on, I limp in with J-9 suited. The flop is J-x-x, turn is nothing either. We raise each other a couple times until he puts me in. I suspect he has J-A. He probably has J-A. What the heck, I’m calling. He had J-A. I bought in again.

Still early, I get A-A. I raise preflop and get three callers. The flop is J-J-x. Player one bets out. Did my Aces hold up? What are the odds that one of them has a Jack? Pretty good. Nevertheless, I stay in and lose a lot of money to the set of Jacks. Very poor discipline.

I stayed low stack for the rest of the night. I won just enough pots to stay alive. Other people knocked each other out. Somehow I found myself in the final three. I was waking up and playing more aggressively. I knocked out the short stack. Down to headsup! The very first hand, I called a 4-4 all-in bet with K-J suited. Didn’t make it. I was now down 28K to 2K in chips, with blinds at 2K and 4K. The next two hands were dealt up since I had to go all-in in the dark. I won them both. I made it back up to 12K. I called an all-in with the best hand, but he caught the flush and knocked me out. I was very happy with second place.

Some other hands were interesting, but I’m too tired to remember any of them.

Tonight: $32
Running Total: $570

Morning after update: I remembered my favorite hand of the night. I was in the big blind. Everyone folded except the small blind who limped in. I checked the option without looking at my cards. The flop was A-4-3, the 4-3 was suited diamonds. The small blind bet big. I figured he had A-x or a set. I looked at my cards and found a nice pair of aces underneath. Now I had trip aces. The only likely hands that could beat me were 2-5 and a flush draw. I was sure he didn’t have 2-5, he would have folded the blind to me. I didn’t think he had a flush draw, he would likely check with that. I figured him for a set of 3s or 4s. As it turned out, he had the set of 4s and I took most of his money with the better set. Fun!

Later I tried the same thing. I was short-stacked in the big blind and checked my option without looking. I needed to look on the turn and by then I had to fold. It’s interesting to not look at your cards. If your opponent doesn’t have premium cards, they don’t know how to play you. And because you make your betting decision after seeing the flop, if you make a big bet, they have to figure you for a much wider range of hands. They can’t assume away the terrible starting hands that got lucky.

I found a new feature on my car. The intermittent wiper has a great little twist. The settings range (of course) from least frequent to most frequent wiping.

Here’s the cool part. The most frequent is no delay at all. It’s the exact same as having the wipers on low constant wiping. Until I used this I hadn’t realized how ridiculous it is to continually switch between the shortest delay and no delay at all, which usually entails having to change wiping modes entirely. This is brilliant, just brilliant.

McCain has been roundly criticized over his belief that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. With a real threat of the Great Depression here, can anyone believe that? I can. The criticism is a bad one, McCain is more or less correct.

There are (at least) three levels of economics and finance to think about.

Financial: All the trouble we have right now is at the financial level. All the troubles are on paper. No houses have been destroyed, no buildings have been razed, etc. Financial issues are Wall Street issues. If an issue is mainly associated with Wall Street, it’s a financial issue. If you can’t understand it, it’s probably a financial issue. The current (phase of the) crisis is a Wall Street problem that has infected the economy as a whole.

Fiscal: Fiscal is just government spending. Our national debt is huge and getting bigger, we have enormous unfunded obligations coming due in Medicare/Medicaid (and Social Security to a lesser extent), and we aren’t addressing these issues. We’re making it worse with all these bailouts, nearly one trillion dollars added to the bad side of the ledger. But remember that this crisis is a long and ongoing. bailouts aside, which are a response to financial problems, nothing much has changed in the last couple years. (Except the fall of the dollar, which is directly connected to our debt level.)

Fundamentals: The GNP of the United States is enormous. Not only are we the biggest economy in the world, we are the biggest by a huge margin. We are over three times the size of the next country (Japan). We are far and away the most productive nation. We lead the world in just about every conceivable indicator of economic strength. Our political and cultural institutions are without peer. We are still the big dog.

These are roughly in reverse order of importance. It is most important to have strong fundamentals, which we do. It is next most important to be strong fiscally, where we are so-so. It is next most important to be strong financially, where we currently are awful. McCain should not be criticized for saying the fundamentals of our economy are strong, they are.

I found a better chart. This is about Medicare particularly, and what is driving the costs. It’s not people living longer.

The literal version of “Take on Me”

Political sign

Yep, that’s racism

Shia LaBeouf. No.

15 gravity defying houses

George Costanza’s top 10 ladies

It’s worth the extra $3.

Facial attractiveness scale (composites from Hot or Not). If nothing else, this demonstrates the power of good lighting and eyeliner.

The highest-earning dead celebrities

Terry Pratchett (author of the Discworld books) talks about his Alzheimer’s.

Ouch. Just… ouch.

Song for Sarah Palin (made by friend of a friend)

The candidates as trains

How McCain lost his brand. “…delivering to McCain innumerable victories in the battle for the daily—and even hourly—news cycle. But presidential campaigns are perverse, quicksilvery things, and it appears that the very tactics that for a while gave McCain the faint hope of victory are now the main obstacle to any hope of a late-stage revival. The new McCain may have won some news cycles, but he is losing the contest of the meta-narrative—and with it, perhaps, the election.”

The hidden cost of war, a short video

Today was Yom Kippur. I took the day off of work. However, there was one meeting I wanted to be in. I went in for an hour in the afternoon. I was already quite hungry. I was already very thirsty (no, you aren’t allowed to drink either). The meeting was a presentation. To keep the audience involved, you won little prizes for answering questions along the way. Since it was trivia (“What do Apple, Google, and Hewlett & Packard have in common?”), I did just fine. The prizes were Pez dispensers and candy. 20 minutes into the meeting I realized I had a bunch of Pez in my mouth and was idly chewing on them. The fast had been unconciously broken. Muttrox goes to hell. Dang!

(Answer: They were all started in garages.)

As I expected, the earmark that McCain dinged Obama for, the $3 million “overhead projector” is in fact the central projector within the planetarium itself. These are sophisticated technical devices. The Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles’ projector cost over $3 million. I’m pretty impressed that’s the worst he could lay at Obama feet. Not very bad at all.

I’ve been trying to find this graph for months.

Take a look at that graph, and tell me the scariest part. That’s right, Medicare. Social Security is not the problem, Medicare is the problem. Whenever you hear someone mention “Entitlements” or “Unfunded Liabilities”, think of this graph. (I’m going to edit it into old posts on this topic also.)

It started raining last night. It has been raining steadily for 20 hours and it’s still going strong. At work, there are two groups of people. One group is gloomy and miserable because of the weather. The other group has aerated and seeded their lawns in the last two weeks. A solid day of rain means that even with our perreniel drought, the new grass has a chance to take and grow. Happy happy rainy day!